Dr. Joseph Zuckerman (second from right) on rounds with residents.

A Dream Come True

For Dr. Joseph Zuckerman, Recipient of New York University’s Distinguished Teaching Medal, It’s a Case of Life Imitating Art

As a young boy growing up in Hicksville, Long Island, in the early 1960s, Joseph Zuckerman was enthralled by the TV series Ben Casey, which chronicled the adventures of a chief resident in neurosurgery at a community hospital. The son of an accountant and homemaker, Zuckerman considered Dr. Casey "the coolest person I ever saw. He did things to make people better, and he’s the reason I wanted to become a doctor."

Little did young Zuckerman imagine, however, that those early yearnings would not only lead him to become a doctor, but a surgeon of considerable renown and a leader in his profession: the Walter A. L. Thompson Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery and chair of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at NYU Langone Medical Center, surgeon-in-chief of NYU Langone’s Hospital for Joint Diseases (HJD), and the immediate past-president of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. Nor could he have imagined that when he would join NYU Langone in 1984, one of his colleagues would be the man his brash childhood hero, Dr. Ben Casey, was loosely modeled after: the late Joseph Ransohoff, MD, chair of the Department of Neurosurgery from 1962 to 1992, who served as medical consultant to the TV series.

There is perhaps one more thing that would have surprised young Joe Zuckerman: he would spend his entire career at one medical center doing what he loves—treating patients and training doctors—and its parent institution, New York University, would honor him with its highest award for teaching, the Distinguished Teaching Medal. Dr. Zuckerman is the eighth member of our faculty to be so hailed. The University awards the medal annually to faculty members who have demonstrated their excellence as educators over a sustained period of time and who have contributed significantly to the intellectual life of the University through their teaching.

Dr. Zuckerman had all but decided on a medical specialty as early as high school, when several injuries he sustained while playing basketball piqued his interest in orthopaedics. After graduating from Cornell University, he earned his MD at the Medical College of Wisconsin, where he was elected to the Alpha Omega Alpha honor society. After training in surgery and orthopaedic surgery at the University of Washington, he completed a fellowship in adult reconstructive surgery/arthritis research at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and was a visiting clinician in shoulder surgery at the Mayo Clinic. Dr. Zuckerman has served as surgeon-in-chief of HJD since 1994 and as chair of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery since 1997. He is the author of, editor of, or contributor to 16 textbooks, 78 book chapters, and 283 peer-reviewed journal articles.

Dr. Zuckerman served as director of the one of the largest orthopaedic residency programs in the country from 1990 to 2006. In that role and others, he has helped train more than 250 residents and an equal number of medical students, whom he has mentored in their pursuit of orthopaedic surgery as a career. Performing nearly 300 operative procedures a year, on top of his administrative and academic duties, he is often referred to by colleagues and students alike as "the busiest man in the business." (His musings on many topics can be viewed at bigthink.com, a knowledge forum featuring top thinkers and doers from around the globe.)

"Dr. Zuckerman always has time for medical students and residents," marvels Chief Resident Charles Jordan, MD, noting that Dr. Zuckerman typically responds to phone calls or e-mails within minutes and makes himself available 24/7. "He knows our wives’ names, our birthdays, and where we grew up—all 62 residents." Orthopaedic residents have conferred their Teacher of the Year Award on Dr. Zuckerman five times, more than on any other faculty member in the department.

But as much as Dr. Zuckerman reveres teaching and appreciates being recognized for doing it well, he emphasizes that medicine, ultimately, is all about the patient. "Dr. Zuckerman is humble enough to acknowledge that surgery is a high-stakes profession and that even he learns new things every day," says John Mercuri (’12). "As a medical student, that grounds you. His patients love him because he really tries to understand how their problems affect their quality of life."

"Patients won’t care how much you know," Dr. Zuckerman is fond of saying, "until they know how much you care."